Adults Break Rules, Rules Break Adults

It’s been a tough few weeks. Back in February I decided to remove as much sugar from my diet as possible.

I have a sugar problem.

OK, it’s not so much a problem as it is an addiction. A real and visceral addiction. I watch food YouTube obsessively and my mouth salivates. I bake trays of brownies and eat the entire tray in one day. I’ll bake cookies and eat half a dozen in one sitting just before I go to bed.

So in February I stopped eating processed sugar. I did it with relative ease (and a lot of fruit) and it made the most massive difference to my life. I was sleeping better than I had in years. I had the energy to exercise every day. I was able to work more effectively and focus for longer. My skin cleared up. My short temper disappeared almost entirely. I was more tolerant in general and loving life.

But there is one massive problem with this incredible outcome: I feel like I’m being punished because I am denied the one thing I love in the world, my one vice. See, I don’t drink, I don’t smoke and now I don’t eat sugar. I exercise every day. I feel like a fucking saint and I hate it.

After two months of feeling amazing but “suffering” through this magnificent change in productivity, I decide I deserve a reward. I go out and have a brownie and ice cream. Then I’m good for a week. Then I need another reward for being good so I buy a treat from the store. Then my partner brings home a treat from the store because I beg her to and I was having a tough day. I don’t sleep very well that night and wake up really tired. I don’t exercise the next day and find myself in a distracted and bad mood so I reward myself with something sugary. I just can’t figure out why I’m so damn tired and so fucking irritated. Then I have another bad night of sleep and wake up more irritable and confused about my mood so I buy a bucket of mini dark chocolate brownies from the store and eat them in one sitting that night. Can you guess how well I slept?

Repeat this for two weeks and I am a disaster zone.

At the end of last week it was pointed out to me that my spiral kicked off with a brownie followed by enough chocolate for a family of four to consume over a few months all eaten by me in 10 days.

Here’s the thing: I am an adult so I get to break rules. I lay down the law and instruct myself not to eat processed sugar. Then I realise that I am all grown up and don’t have parents (or kids) so I can do whatever the hell I want, even if it makes me feel like shit.

Because I am addicted to sugar I will never attribute the downward spiral to my drug of choice and just keep going until someone else helps me see the candy coating from M&Ms.

This matters because often the hard things are the good things. The difficult things are the ones that make the biggest change.

What’s your addiction? What’s the thing keeping you in the death spiral that you loath? Is it sugar? A bad relationship? An addiction to being busy? Screen time? Anxiety? Stress? Coffee?

What’s your trigger? How do you remove it from your life?

I am in no way saying that I now don’t consume processed sugar, that would be naive of me to believe. But I am telling you that I am building habits to avoid the spiral, not rules that I can break.

Adults can break rules and rules can break adults. Set yourself habitual goals that make your life better consistently, not worse. Eating all of the available chocolate known to humankind is not a long term habit that I can sustain. Sleeping properly, exercising, working well and enjoying my life are all things that are sustainable if I can keep sugar in check.

It’s been a week with no sugar, daily exercise, meditation, dog walks and fruit and I feel great. Long may it continue.